Douglas Morrissey thesis - chapter 3 - The Truth About Stock Impoundings in the Kelly Country in the 1870s [Brian Stevenson]

Note that this is the second in an ongoing series of chapter reviews of Doug Morrissey's 1987 thesis "Selectors, Squatters and Stock Thieves: A Social History of Kelly Country." The first part can be found at


 http://elevenmilecreek.blogspot.com/2010/11/douglas-morrisseys-unpublished-thesis.html


Everyone reading this will be familiar with Ned Kelly's views on stock impoundings, as outlined in the Jerilderie Letter.

'If a poor man happened to leave his horse or a bit of a poddy calf outside his paddock they would be impounded. I have known over sixty head of horses impounded in one day by Whitty and Byrne all belonging to poor farmers. They would have to leave their ploughing or harvest or other employment to go to Oxley. When they would get there [they would] perhaps not have money enough to release them and have to give a bill of sale or borrow money.'



Pretty hard times for the selectors, yes. But how accurate is the picture? Fortunately, it is possible for us to compare this depressing picture with the picture derived by Douglas Morrissey. Morrissey did his research the hard way, and combed through old newspapers, shire records, government gazette and the like and distilled the information from these usually dry sources into his thesis on social conditions in the Kelly Country during the Kelly period. Ned's impassioned (and, it will be shown, somewhat misleading prose) is available on countless places on the web, but Morrissey's work is largely unpublished. It provides a contrasting picture indeed.



For a start, the picture that Ned paints of mass impoundings to the tune of 60 a day is misleading, to say the least. It was on very rare occasions that the impoundings in the Oxley Shire exceeded 20 or 30 animals. Morrissey states: 'The regional norm was much lower and generally remained constant at around five or ten animals.' But single animal impoundings were by far the most common occurrence, although in October 1877 Mark Whitty, scion of the man who Ned accosted at the races, had 35 trespassing cows impounded. Morrissey concedes that this particular episode did result in some economic hardship, as most of these animals were not redeemed after a week, but the days of mass impoundings were pretty much over by the late 1870s.



Why were animals impounded? 'Pressure to conserve available resources such as pasture land and access to the region's waterholes' was, of course, the biggest factor. The intention seems to have been, not to harass the selectors but to ensure that the selectors kept their livestock on their own land or on the land designated as commons. The impoundings were to encourage that the district's livestock grazed exclusively on the land of their owners, something that in itself is entirely fair and reasonable.



The impounding rate was very high in the early 1870s, when fences were still being erected, but decreased dramatically as more land was fenced. In 1870 1 137 animals were impounded, but for most of the decade the figure was around the 200 mark, with a peak figure, 253, being reached in 1876. When the Kellys were out, the number of impoundings decreased dramatically, showing the fear and intimidation that they inspired. In 1878, for most of which year, of course, the Kelly Gang did not exist, the figure was 199. It dropped dramatically to less than 90 animals and in 1880 the number was an incredible 26. With the Kellys wiped out, the number rebounded to 106 in 1881.



All things considered, it seems extremely unlikely that an impounding of 60 animals in a day would ever have occurred, Ned's estimate in the Jerilderie letter notwithstanding. Judging by the statistics, it seems most likely that most days passed without a single animal being impounded.



What Ned also overlooked was that some squatters, no doubt liking a quiet life, simply overlooked trespassing livestock. Squatter McBean, famously a victim of Harry Power, told the Benalla Land Board in 1872 that he had decided not to bother with impounding because, as the victim of several arson attempts, he did not want to be 'burnt out.'



Also unmentioned in the Jerilderie Letter were impounding disputes between selectors, with no squatter involvement. There is no way that Ned could be unaware of this. Long before anyone had heard of Ned, his cousins the Lloyds and the Barnett family (later to be Kelly sympathisers as well) had a bitter squabble over access to water. Barnett found some of Jack Lloyd Senior's in his wheat and decided to take them to the pound. Jack Lloyd and his son Tom arrived on horseback and easily rescued their livestock, but Barnett retaliated by taking out a summons against Jack for 'rescuing impounded horses.'



The next day, Barnett noticed that his horse was missing. He tracked the animal to the Lloyd house, and found his horse tied up in O'Brien's stable, which adjoined Lloyd's property. The poor creature had been tied up and cruelly hacked to death with a tomahawk. It wasn't too hard to figure out the culprit. Lloyd, not a nice person, was not very bright either, and was still wearing a shirt and trousers caked with dried blood, which he tried to blame on a cut finger when Constable Ernest Flood (funny how these folks keep turning up) made the arrest. In February 1873 Lloyd was sentenced to a well warranted four years imprisonment with hard labour, for an offence that attracted a maximum of ten years imprisonment. The judge took into consideration Lloyd's mature age, overlooking the fact that he should have known a lot better.

(Special note: if Doug Morrissey reads this, it would be great if he got in touch!)

The next installment of this series has now been added at

http://elevenmilecreek.blogspot.com/2011/06/douglas-morrisseys-thesis-chapter-4.html